I love a good duet. Here’s two pros doing what they do best.

No one caressed a song like Bacharach and no one crawled inside on like Carr. I’ve always loved Vicki’s voice and here she’s right on top of it. I miss singers like this Singers who not only know what they’re singing about, but really love the act of doing it. You can tell she truly loved to sing. These kind of stylists are very rare now. They’re going out of style and slowly but surely, there’s a whole generation who has no idea they even existed.

One of my favorite scenes in any Garland film. This scene was originally written out as a very brief encounter between Judy’s character and Dirk’s. It was to include the story Judy tells at the top about how she arrived at the hospital and end with the love shared between the two as a promise of their love and an understanding that in the end, it could never really work out.

However, during the actual filming, Garland let go, and was compelled to keep speaking, The two actor’s found a deeper and more intense dialogue that served not only their characters state of mind, but provided a fascinating look at their history together.

This was Judy’s idea from the beginning and she herself came up with most of her lines.

I love watching a brave actor let loose and allow the truth of what they’re feeling right then come through them and land in the middle of the text. No one did this like Judy. Having no formal training and relying purely on instinct (as both a singer and an actor) Garland’s ability to tessarract (change instantly with no provocation or pre conceived motivation) is unparalleled.

When she collapses in her lover’s arms and her Shape goes from upright to a small deflated ball, the tears pour out of her, and she begins to speak about her son and how he simply didn’t want to go with her., The truth of the scene and what was in her heart from the beginning suddenly comes rushing forward as if someone had split open a dam.

This is powerful stuff here, and no one could handle it so deftly, and without indication like Garland. What a treat to see an actor at the height of their powers and the breadth of their bravery. Also…notice that the entire scene is done in one, long take.

Unreal.

I had been standing on the corner for almost 3 hours that night. The lights across the street at “Puss N Boots” were flickering, and the “N” kept blinking on and off occasionally. The only reason I noticed that was because I had nothing else to do, and when you’re waiting for a Trick for 3 straight hours to attempt to pay last months rent, a sign that blinks PussBoots every couple minutes can get very entertaining.

As I was about to give up for the night, and go home to try and think of another excuse for my landlord, a huge black car with a silver trunk pulled up next to me.

I smiled.

The window rolled down with a hum, and a voice from the driver’s seat came through the blackness of the inside of the car:

“You. What’s up?”

“I looked behind me for a second.

“Oh….me? Me, what’s up?” I said still smiling.

He giggled. That was always a good sign.

“Well? What do you think?” he asked ominously.

“That depends. About what?”

“Get in.” he said sternly.

I backed up.

“I’d rather take the bus.” I said back.

I had to be careful. There were always cops out to get their prostitute quota and all you had to do to land in jail for the night was mention money. The Tricks never got arrested, just the hookers. So I always made them bring up money first.

The Chicago wind barely breathed on me, and so I wasn’t wearing a coat and had a very small purse with me. I didn’t have much protection and I was already getting a strange feeling about this guy. He wore sunglasses and wouldn’t even tilt his head to look at me when he spoke.

“You don’t have to take the bus. I’ll take you where you need to go.”

“Really? Great. I need to go to Paris.”

He giggled again. I moved closer.
“Do you want to do this or what? I don’t have a lot of time.” He said plainly.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, so if you’re running out of time, you should probably hit the road.”

“I’ve got $1,000.00.”

“And I’ve got a scathing case of herpes.”

He finally leaned forward making a screeching sound on the leather seats, pulled out a roll of bills and threw them on the ground by my feet. I picked up the wad, pulled off a thick rubber band, and counted the money, It was a Grand. I shook as I put it in my boot. I’d never held that much money before in my life.

“Will you get in now, please?”

He was probably the first man in my 23 years on the planet that actually said “please” to me. I climbed in the passenger seat of the car merely by rote. I remember seeing the moon. I remember as my head went into the car I took a look at the moon. It was a full circle of light surrounded by a few grey lined clouds. It reminded me of the moon on that old TV show “Dark Shadows”. But for some reason, it felt peaceful.. Tranquil. Soothing. I wasn’t frightened, I wasn’t nervous, I was strangely calm and sedate.

And to be honest…really, really relieved.

We drove, and talked.

“What can I get for a grand?” he asked driving through the Chicago streets.

“Honey, for this much money I’ll paint your Goddamm house.”

We laughed. He had a great laugh It was deep and full. It came from his belly. His hands gripped the steering wheel like he was hanging on for dear life. He as still wearing sun glasses which cause me to wonder how he could see the road, But even if he was Stevie Wonder, he was doing very well navigating pot holes by instinct. He was wearing what looked like a very expensive suit, with a very shiny blue tie. I assumed he had just been to dinner and had gone out for a couple of drinks. He wasn’t drunk by any means, but I could smell liquor on him, and although his hands were practically glued to the wheel, he seemed a little loose.

“Can we pull off into the park?” he asked.

“Sure.”

We drove to the large Totem pole by the side of Lake Shore Drive and he parked the car. It was almost midnight so we had to keep peering off to the side for police.

We sat in the car. He told me about his wife, his two kids and the fact the he was a very unhappy lawyer living in a condo on Marine drive with a house in Connecticut. He hated his life. He hated his marriage, and he hated his kids.

“I like you though.” He said.

“Well that’s comforting.” I said back.

“Are you always on that corner?”

“No. Why?”

“I’d like to see you off it. If you’re going to do this, you need to make more money and get off that damn corner.”

He then reached into his pocket and handed me a list of names.

“These guys will keep you off that corner.”

And it did. In the last year I was a prostitute, those names were men in Chicago who bought me cocaine, clothes, fabulous dinners, took me to The Drake, and got me my first (and only) full length diamond mink coat.

Finally, after 4 or 5 hours of really great conversation, I was ready for whatever freaky thing he had in mind. But before that happened, I needed to see what was underneath those damn glasses.

“So…what’s with the glasses?”

He turned to face me in the passenger seat, the first time all night he did so. He reached up, peeled of the glasses, and around his eyes it looked as though someone had taken a lighted match and torched the skin off. I tried not to flinch.

“You’re beautiful. I should have taken these off earlier.” He said smiling.

I reached up and touched his face. Once I got used to it, it really wasn’t that bad.

We didn’t have sex that night. In fact, after he took off his glasses, he put them back on and took me to MacDonalds, where I showed him the joy of getting a Big Mac and a Filet o’ Fish and combining them into one heart attack deluxe.

He dropped me off at the same corner, and I never saw him again. I asked some of the people I dated from The List about the guy in the black car with the glasses, and no one knew he was.

Until one night at a fancy party in some rich guy’s townhouse, I asked one last time, and the tall man with the Sigmund Freud beard said:

“Oh…I think you mean Mel. Yeah…that guy’s dead.”

I choked a little on my soggy cheese and cracker thing.

“He’s what? How do you know?”

“He shot himself in the head, I think.”

I didn’t know him well, and I didn’t know why I was so sad. I liked Mel. I actually wanted to see him again. I wondered about his kids, about the wife he hated, about the life he wanted to change, and the one thing he said to me at the end of our meeting:

“I think you have to find out what you think about beauty when you look like this. People look at me and they see one thing and one thing only, and I’m about a hundred different things on the inside.”

And as I stood there in my Gucci dress, with my Chanel shoes, and drinking wine and eating cheese on a fancy cracker with a bunch of stuffy, elderly rich people, I thought about what they saw. Who they saw. I was bought that night. I was their property. They owned me.

Or so they assumed.

Because on the inside, I was about a hundred different things.

And I walked out on to the rich guy’s balcony with my fancy glass in my fancy clothes and my fancy cracker and I felt okay. I looked up and followed the gray clouds to a full moon peering out through the sky, and I thanked Mel. He might have hated his life, but he left me with a great gift, and one I repeat to this day when things get confusing. Or frightening.

Or whenever I believe those voices that try and convince me that I’m only the 'one' person other people see.